


Jonathan, David, and Michelangelo

by MJ (mjr91)



Category: Dresden Files (TV)
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Magic, Romance, Underage - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:19:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjr91/pseuds/MJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A teenage Harry Dresden discovers he's hot for teacher.  Some things work both ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jonathan, David, and Michelangelo

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a quote of Oscar Wilde's at his main trial that has become quite famous in LGBT history. You can read it, in a transcript of the trial, at http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/wilde/Crimwilde.html .
> 
> Originally posted at the skull_boy_love LJ community.
> 
> Harry is somewhere around 16 here. At least in my jurisdiction, that's old enough to be legal. As a writer, however, I really don't care. If a character's being under 18 makes some kind of difference for you other than as a relationship dynamic, this is not your story.

Prologue:

Harry Dresden, bored student of magic, scratched his head and stared at the text in front of him. Plato. Why in the name of any gods floating in the neighborhood his uncle thought that Greek philosophy was going to improve his mind baffled him. It was especially annoying that his uncle, Justin Morningway, and his tutor, Hrothbert of Bainbridge – Bob -- both seemed to agree that learning sufficient Greek to work on translating it himself would improve him even further, when the ancient language he really needed to know was Latin. He understood needing to know the Hebrew alphabet in order to do his work, and being able to follow Latin, but everyone was far too fond of forcing Greek literature into him as well. Most of it, fortunately, was in English translation, but every so often Bob made him do these ridiculous translation exercises too.

This passage was different from most, however, and it was more interesting than the usual fare offered for translation. If he was doing his work right, he thought, peering into an ancient Liddell and Scott grammar that his uncle had used before him, he was reading something about sex. Had Bob tossed it into the mix for amusement? Bob sometimes threw curves into Harry's work to keep him on his toes, and sometimes threw other curves in for amusement – occasionally for Harry's amusement, and all too often, Harry suspected, for Bob's amusement at Harry's expense.

What he was reading called for permission to go to the library. There might be some relevant material in Uncle Justin's huge collection of books -- Justin Morningway owned more than enough dusty tomes on the history of everything to keep anyone up to their neck in research -- but given the subject matter, it was better to go where neither Uncle Justin nor Bob could see what he was reading. The librarian might stare at him, but she wouldn't call home and leave messages about his reading materials.

Besides, there was the chance of finding cute girls on the way to or from the library, which was a plus. And as he'd been suspecting lately, there might be more to the ideas he was having lately than just checking out the cute girls. If the suggestions in the book were what they appeared to be, there was a lot more going on out there in the world of sex than he'd known for sure, but there seemed to be plenty that he'd suspected. 

He'd more than suspected, to be fair, about guys. He'd started looking at them lately, and it felt the way he felt when he saw the cute girls. He didn't know much about things, but he knew what it was called, and he knew that Greek literature didn't have a monopoly on it. One of his father's favorite stage assistants had lived with her girlfriend, and some of the stagehands and musicians in the various theaters had male friends. His father had always said it was all right… but Harry had been somewhat vague, back when he was still ten and eleven, as to precisely what "it" had been. 

He knew more now, but not enough not to feel stupid about explaining what a guy in tight jeans did to him, or that he had the same reaction when Bob went into his rumbling "Harry Dresden, what do you think you're doing?" voice.

He had that reaction to Bob a lot, actually. He'd dreamed about Bob at night, had thought about Bob during the day. When he wasn't thinking about girls, or jerking off at thoughts of the college student that came over to mow the grounds on his uncle's estate. The one who yanked off his shirt when it got too hot outside, and the sweat was pouring off of him. The student had a tattoo with his girlfriend's name in its swirling midst on his shoulder, though. That took away some of the thrill of looking at him.

Surely he could just ask Bob about it all, as Bob was his font of all knowledge according to Uncle Justin. But if he did ask Bob, he wanted desperately not to sound stupid about things. That would be more embarrassment than he could handle. The things Bob had needed to teach him already, just to know about girls, and, well, stuff, had been more than enough to contemplate. He needed to educate himself about certain other things more thoroughly before even trying to talk with Bob – if he could. Because he really couldn't look at Bob without thinking about Bob, so maybe he was screwed either way.

* * * 

Part One:

"Let me see the translation you've done so far, Harry." Bob came around the table and peered over the young man's shoulder. "Ah, this is quite good work – better than your usual, I dare say. In fact, it's so accurate that I suspect you consulted a translation of this dialogue at the library while you were there. Copying the translation isn't going to help you in the real world, you know. I hope you took the opportunity to do some actual research while you were there, and not just find that some rather dusty old Oxford don translated your work for you a hundred years ago."

Harry blushed. "I did do some research while I was at the library. I didn't really understand some of this, so I had to look things up. I mean, it's got stuff in it about… well, uh…"

Bob smiled blandly. "It's a prominent part of Greek history, Harry, as well as of Roman history, and to my own knowledge it wasn't uncommon among the Celts. It was quite common for adult men to seek out teenage boys and to take their academic and moral education under their wing, while hoping for other… matters… to progress further. The Cretans carried it to a rather extreme level, which may be one of the reasons Plato suggests here that a physical extension of the relationship might be inappropriate. The Cretans actually kidnapped the young men of their choice and then plied them and their parents with the equivalent of dowry gifts afterwards, while the Athenians preferred to engage in various stylized courtship rituals first. The Spartans had some rather unique traditions of their own."

Harry pondered Bob's statements. "So, uh, this was all about, uh, sex?"

"Not necessarily. The Athenians believed it was improper to have a physical relationship with a student unless the student was willing to initiate it. If he chose not to, then either his suitor would give up entirely and look for someone else, or else they pursued the relationship on a less… er… physical level." Bob pursed his lips. "The structure of Greek society was extremely complicated. Status was not conferred solely based on income or family. Age, gender, place of birth, military status – all of those were important to the Greeks. They are still important in most places on Earth, but for the most part not to the degree they were then. Young men were simply one more thing for someone to acquire, not individuals in their own right."

His student shook his head at his homework project, not looking up. "So it wasn't like being in school and having a crush on your teacher."

"Not in the least," Bob assured him. The reference struck him as not necessarily innocuous; it was difficult to tell if his young charge's curiosity was strictly a desire for information, an interest in anything that might pertain to sex – certainly not unlikely at the age when a young man was a walking bag of hormones – or if Harry was ferreting out specific information on the particular topic. 

Admittedly, one sometimes threw bait out to a student to check the sort of bite that was taken of it, but to be quite honest, he'd not picked this assignment as one that might increase his knowledge of his charge's personal matters. Harry was usually quite open with him, as far as a teen might be comfortable with any close older adult. A young man of Harry's age didn't normally address any sexual topics deeply with adults, though Harry really had no one else with whom to discuss such matters at all. 

Boys Harry's age certainly didn't normally have a centuries-old ghost of a necromancer as their primary companion. It had made the necessary discussion of the general mechanics of reproduction an interesting situation. For all of the alleged openness of the modern century, apparently Bob's generation had talked less about such matters and swived more.

Harry was musing on something – presumably the topic they'd just covered, but knowing him, just as easily on anything under the sun – and doodling idly on his notebook paper. Finally he looked up at Bob. "What were things like when you were in school?"

The ghost chuckled a bit. "I didn't go to school – if one wasn't in the Church one didn't do such things back then. Nor did I have a tutor. I apprenticed with another sorcerer, and it was through him that I first learned enough reading to follow a grimoire, enough Latin to learn incantations, and enough mathematics and astronomy to do astrological calculations. The rest of it I learned on my own, wherever I could. I traveled everywhere I could to learn whatever I could find. Over the centuries, I've learned even more dead than I knew alive, although I cannot do much with that knowledge myself. It is my duty to pass it on to whoever owns my skull."

"It doesn't seem fair," Harry lamented.

"I don't suppose it is fair," Bob acknowledged. "Life is not fair. Nor, insofar as I have discovered, is death. We simply do the best we can with what we're dealt. And others come to us for our assistance in trying to improve their hand." He looked at the clock. "I think we're done with lessons for the day. Good work, for once. For tomorrow, I want you to run the astrological calculations I gave you, and to go over the next of Plato's dialogues in your uncle's English translation in the study. I'll also begin to cover Agrippa's discourse on astrology in some depth. 

"Besides those, please be ready to discuss the making of the traditional magical wand from the Greater Key of Solomon. I'm not concerned with the consecration, just the construction. You'll want to go to the library this week to research the woods used in its construction – for next week, I want you to have an idea of why the specific woods suggested are the ones used. Use the public library and your uncle's occult library to be able to give me some ideas on this." 

He smiled to himself as Harry groaned at the tasks. His own assignments at Harry's age had involved making his master's parchment sheets, mixing his inks, keeping his astronomical devices clean, and copying over his master's grimoires. That was aside from serving his meat, pouring his ale, and chopping firewood. Another apprentice had been given other tasks. But needs had changed since he had been an apprenticed necromancer; parchment was rarely self-manufactured, herbs from around the world were ordered by mail, and the works of Paracelsus were available in libraries open to the public. And Harry hadn't needed to be taught to read. 

Harry might think his assignments were difficult, easy as they were compared to Bob's early days, but he'd eventually discover that there was still hard work to learning magic. 

* * *

The job description of "tutor", in the Morningway household, could have been summarized as "other duties as described," most of which were difficult for a ghost to perform. However, Justin Morningway's housekeeper was not a fool, and was herself a retired root woman originally from the South, so it was not impossible for Bob to give her appropriate directions. She had figured Bob for the resident remains of some Morningway ancestor and therefore gave him the respect she showed for Morningways in general – quite unlike her attitude towards Justin Morningway in specific. 

Justin Morningway kept Mrs. Dupree Veronique as his housekeeper because she knew enough of "mojo" to respect his power, and because she was good at her work and kept her mouth shut – it had nothing to do with his liking of her attitude toward him. He knew as well as she did that the depths of Hell had creatures in it who were fonder of him than she was.

One of Bob's "other duties," one Mrs. Veronique cared not to perform, was checking in on Harry at night. "This is no house for a boy his age," she had told Bob once. "Can't see how he sleeps at night at all. Me, I keep my room washed down with Florida water. Don't trust no one but the saints to keep me safe here. Papa Ghede's got his work cut out for sure in a place like this. But he's getting on to be a young man and all that, Harry is, and it's not right for me to go on in there to check on him. Needs a man to do that. You care for that boy, cher, you need to keep an eye on him. I'll put anything in that room you want me to, wash it down with Indian floor wash all you want, but he don't need maman. Needs a man around him, even if that man's not too solid."

And so Bob had assumed the duty – one that Justin Morningway could not deign to be bothered about even when home – of seeing teeth brushed, face washed, clothing put away, and nightwear donned. Fortunately Harry was too old for such things as having to be tucked in, or having the light turned out for him or stories read, when he'd arrived at his Uncle Justin's, as Bob's abilities were more supervisory and critical than physically oriented. When Harry had first arrived, the greatest irritation Bob had known had revolved around his inability to provide more than sympathy and emotional comfort to a boy whose father had just died – tucking in and extinguishing lights were one thing, but it was pointless to deny that there was a point to being able to give a boy of Harry's age at that stage a supportive hug. 

Bob's own childhood contained no such expressive actions by adults, but he was quite willing to concede that he had been raised at a time when nurturing children was something no one did. A child then was either labor in waiting or an education and a military career or marriage preparing to happen, depending on the family's social standing, and the higher the standing the younger the child was when it was sent away. And if neither of those suited, one simply deposited the infant with the monks or the nuns. There was something to be said for the change in attitude, which was nearly as beneficial to mankind, in Bob's estimation, as the printing press and the development of the erotic romance novel.

Sleep being far less necessary to the dead than to the living, Bob had begun a pattern of peering into Harry's room at random when he slept. Although Harry was unlikely to open a window and run away in the dark of night, one never knew about the random nightmare – although, if he were honest, he had no need to lay eyes on Harry to know if such a thing were disturbing him. Checking on Harry merely seemed prudent despite his age in that house, as far as Bob cared to voice it to Mrs. Veronique. And if that redoubtable root doctor thought anything other than Bob said regarding the matter, she kept her opinion to herself.

* * *  
Part Two:

Harry was not having a nightmare – of that, Bob was sure. On the other hand, one of the reasons Harry was not having a nightmare was that he was not asleep, the latter being a necessary prelude to the former. And there was no reason, earthly or unearthly, that he should not be sleeping this late at night. Bob determined to pay a fast check on Harry, since there really was little else to do at two in the morning, and since catching Harry awake and reading at that hour would deserve a reprimand. 

There seemed to be no reason to announce himself, even though Harry was awake; better to catch the culprit red-handed and remind him of the consequences of becoming far too drowsy while incanting during studies. Bob strolled through the bedroom door, however, only to find the light off. 

And rather than finding someone reading in bed with a flashlight under a tented sheet, any tenting of linens was quite clearly due to something that was not involving a literary exploit, one-handed though the activity conspicuously was.

If a ghost could blush, Bob did so. He certainly felt as if his typically ghostly pallor was indeed coloring red. He backed out of the room as silently as he had entered, praying that Harry had not noticed the intrusion. With all of his will, Bob forced anything else – the weather, his own mother's wretched cooking, Mrs. Veronique's formula for Indian floor wash – into his head to replace what he had just seen. To dwell on it would do no one any good, especially if it forced him to admit how badly he had wished to continue watching.

* * *

"Uh, Bob?" Harry was sitting in Justin Morningway's library, a glass of Mrs. Veronique's best fresh lemonade sitting next to him on the side table. What he was not doing was his homework. Had he been doing his homework, he might have puzzled at why the author of the Greater Key of Solomon insisted on almond or hazel wands, while yet another grimoire especially recommended elder wood. 

Bob was puzzling over elder wood himself at that moment. Nearly every grimoire called for almond or hazel; if Harry were going through Waite's summary of the various grimoires – a convenient resource, though Waite was a deadly writer at even the best of times – he might just find the question, which obliged Bob to prepare himself with the answer. As yet, he'd never really found the answer, which was fine, to be honest, as he wasn't likely to be making a wand any time in the foreseeable future. And gods only knew what Harry was likely to do with regard to wands; he only hoped Harry could understand that baseball bats were not appropriate.

"What is it?" Bob turned away from a volume of Cornelius Agrippa that was floating at a comfortable reading height in front of him. "If you're researching the wood issue, I don't recommend any of the Druid works. They'll only confuse you at this stage. Trust me on that."

"I… uh…" Harry was quite evidently not reading, as he had so evidently not been the night before; he was, in fact, curled with his feet under him on the chair in a fashion that was likely to have Mrs. Veronique charge at him with her dust mop if she caught him at it. "Never mind."

A "never mind" in the mouth of a mid-teenaged boy is as often as not fraught with danger. Bob willed the book closed and onto the library table, and crossed over to Harry. "I gather this has nothing to do with your lessons, seeing that you're not doing them at the moment."

"Nah." Harry dragged a fingernail along the chair's arm, watching the indented trail it left in the velvet upholstering. "It's nothing important."

"You're sure." Better to push than to ignore. With Harry, the question could range from whether he could learn to resurrect his parents to how to create a doppelganger to escape from the house to go watch a sports event without anyone noticing, or to a host of wildly unmagical questions that he preferred to put to Bob than to his uncle.

"Yeah." Harry finally turned to look up at Bob. "Uh… is there… could you look like you're sitting down or something? This is rough on my neck."

"Of course." Bob moved to the leather chair on the other side of the small table and eased himself into a position that matched the chair. Fortunately, his body could ignore the various physical conventions that would have made the unsupported position impossible for a mortal for any length of time. It was fine to teach on one's feet, but he understood how much easier it was to talk about personal matters with the young man while sitting. It was easier to appear to lean on Harry's bed than it was to do this, since even he had a sense of balance, but it was never a good idea to ignore Harry when something was on his mind; he already was ignored quite enough. "Is that better?"

"Yeah, thanks." Harry lifted the glass of lemonade, ran a finger through the condensation trails on the outside, and then drank, carefully placing the glass back on a coaster in order to avoid the wrath of Mrs. Veronique. He sat quietly for another few moments. "Uh." Bob winced; he had to find some way to work Harry out of his inarticulate grunts that passed for some sort of conversational fillers. "Last night?"

"Last night?" Bob tilted his head, looking quizzically at Harry. There had been nothing remarkable about the previous evening – nothing, that was, until around two in the morning.

"Yeah. I… uh…" Harry swallowed. "I thought I was being quiet." Another swallow, and a wince. "I think… did you look in my room? I kinda felt like… uh… well, you know… I can kinda tell… and…" Harry's face was redder than the leaves outside the library window.

Damn. There was no other word for it. "Yes, Harry, I did look in your room last night. I suddenly realized that you were awake and I wanted to check why. I'm very sorry about that. I left as soon as I realized what was happening. Things like that are private, and I hoped you wouldn't realize I'd been there."

The boy sighed, unleashing a sound and a look of relief that felt like a cool breeze. "You're not mad at me or anything? I mean, you're not gonna tell Uncle Justin or anything?"

Whatever Bob had expected, that wasn't it. "Harry." He forced himself not to chuckle at his charge's consternation. "I am not angry. I am most certainly not going to tell your uncle. And no one is going to punish you."

"Really?" Harry looked confused. "I thought… uh… I thought… I mean, people aren't supposed to… uh…"

"Masturbate?" Bob supplied for him. Harry nodded. "I assure you, Harry, people have done that for centuries. They certainly did in mine, and the planet is still here. It's not an uncommon activity, especially among young men your age. It is, however, usually intended to be a private activity, and that is why I just apologized to you for walking in on it. Incidentally, it will not affect your eyesight, as for some reason I understand to be rumored. It certainly never bothered mine."

Harry looked up at him.

"Yes, Harry," Bob laughed mildly. "I told you people have done it for centuries. We did when I was alive, at any rate, and it never hurt anyone. It's a perfectly harmless way to relieve sexual arousal. People do it much less once they're in a relationship with someone else."

The news oddly failed to console Harry, who looked a trifle paler and vaguely as if he were about to sweat or become feverish. "Oh, okay…"

"Is there a problem, Harry?"

"I… I was thinking about somebody while I was… uh… uhm… doing it. I… I don't know… if that's…"

This was certainly different – not the question, which Bob supposed had been asked uncounted numbers of times since Queen Victoria's reign had caused the English-speaking world to develop an unhealthy fear of perfectly reasonable behaviors, but the attitude that had accompanied it. Unless, of course, Harry had been reading in those books of Justin's that Bob had insisted be moved with a budding wizard in the house. There was no way that Harry was ready for knowing about sexual magic when he still couldn't even draw a proper sigil for Frimost or Guland. Bob didn't sense any disturbance in that small section of texts, fortunately, so that wasn't the issue by any means.

"Having fantasies is something people do all of the time, Harry. At your age, it's natural for your mind to be there more often than it is on much of anything else. Which is why you go to more effort translating the Greek or Latin passages I give you that mention something to do with sex." Bob smiled at his charge.

Harry rubbed his hands across his face, aggrieved. "I wanted you to stay. Last night. I was thinking about you, Bob." He bolted out of the chair and ran from the library.

"Well, that was certainly the event of the day," Bob sighed to himself, out loud though for no one's benefit in particular.

Mrs. Veronique strode into the library purposefully. "Thought I heard Mr. Harry running like a herd of bull elephants on concrete."

"I believe that is exactly what you heard, Mrs. Veronique. I was discussing certain facts of life with him, at which point he blurted out some pointed personal disclosure and then took off, probably to go hide in his room."

The housekeeper picked up Harry's deserted glass and then turned her attention to Bob. "What, cher? That he got a crush on you about a mile wide? Could have told you that, silly old ghost man, you. 'Course, you got one on him, too. Mr. Justin's not here enough to see it and you two too stupid to notice, so I have to do all the noticin' for everyone in this place. Got to notice so much I can hardly get my work done."

"I don't presume you have plans to tell – "

"To what? Tell Mr. Justin? You think I'm stupid as you two? I tell him anything 'bout anything, I have to deal with his merde. Cher, you know as well as me that nothin' worth that." She paused. "That boy, someday he'll learn things about Mr. Justin Morningway. Won't be pretty, either, when he does learn. Now, you, cher – you know I see things, and not just with my eyes, when I brew my roots – you mark me, you leave here with Mr. Harry someday. You two together someday, maybe just not yet." She bustled out of the library, everything rustling behind in her wake.

* * *  
Part Three:

Bob felt a niggling sensation in his mind. It was much like the one he'd had a few nights before, when he had accidentally walked in on Harry. Perhaps Harry was at it again – it would hardly be surprising for a teenage boy to do it constantly if he could – although he had been in his room for two days claiming illness, demanding privacy, and only soliciting the presence of Mrs. Veronique to bring him food. "No need for the doctor, cher," she told Bob. "Only thing hurting him is pride. Opened his mouth, put in his foot. You want me to doctor his meals, I can do it, calm him down. Or I can put in some saltpeter and just slow down those hormones he got? You tell me, cher." Bob had chosen to do nothing; Harry would emerge from his self-imposed exile as soon as he was tired of wallowing in conflated teen misery and angst.

If Harry were at it again, Bob determined, he was most certainly not going into Harry's room under any circumstances until the tingle in the back of a dark corner of his mind went away. He'd told Harry that privacy was deserved for such things, as it was – and Harry's disclosure most definitely made discretion the much better part of valor.

Then he felt something else – something that was far more easily identifiable and something that he could not ignore even if he chose to do so. He was being summoned.

By Harry.

And as Harry was one of his skull's owners, and as Justin Morningway had made clear that Bob served Harry as well as himself, Bob was unable to refuse being summoned without good reason.

But privacy was certainly a reason – and yet there came the summoning again, louder and firmer. Harry was determined, it seemed. Having no choice, Bob dematerialized from the library, where he had been amusing himself by reviewing a book of Arthurian legends and checking which of the Merlin stories in it actually had been built up around some of the mighty acts of Hrothbert of Bainbridge; it was always delightful to see how the gossip about him deviated from his own recollections. How Winifred was always being confused with that silly nymph Nimue – simply ridiculous. 

He rematerialized in Harry's bedroom, prepared for anything. Almost anything. After all, he'd had centuries to conclude that he'd seen almost everything.

Apparently there were things Hrothbert of Bainbridge hadn't seen before and for which he really wasn't quite prepared.

One of those things, certainly, was the sight of Harry, naked on his bed, candles lit on the bedside table – candles that, Bob sharply reminded himself in order to maintain some semblance of sanity, were supposed to be used for a magical assignment for the following week – with his right hand doing exactly what Bob had most certainly not wanted to see, and his eyes glued directly on Bob.

"Harry…" Bob tried his low, growling "Harry Dresden, you're in trouble now, young man" voice on him, hoping that if it failed to shock Harry, it would at least keep himself in one ectoplasmic piece. Doing his best not to either watch Harry's hand or to look into Harry's eyes at the moment was significantly harder than it should have been… and the very word "harder" was a poor choice to Bob at just that time, since his body did have functional solidity on his own plane, and he was trying with a mad effort of will not to notice his own erection.

"I told you I was thinking about you when you came in the other night… it wasn't the first time… imagining you could do this for me…"

"Harry," Bob tried with whatever severity he was able to muster. "Do. Not. Go there."

"Been there, done that. I want the tee shirt, Bob."

It was a bad spell, of course. Or else something in the universe obviously had gone completely awry, and no doubt there was a Saturn return passing through the fourth house just then. There, those were rational explanations. Unless Justin Morningway was playing some kind of game with them for his own amusement – but no, Justin simply didn't care what anyone else did, if it wasn't interfering with his own plans of the moment. "Harry. No."

"You want it too, Bob. I think you do, anyway." Bob was trying not to notice the angle of Harry's hand, that Harry held his cock underhand, not overhand, as he stroked himself, that Harry's hair fell into his face the same way as a young French conjuror with whom Bob had once had a brief but extremely amusing night in Calais centuries before, back before Winifred. "Tell me you don't, and I'll stop." Harry paused to stroke harder for a moment. "Or else… leave. You don't want to be here, you can leave. I'm unsummoning you. Or… you can watch. I want you to watch. I know you like watching, I heard you tell Uncle Justin once…"

Harry's free hand was in his mouth now, as Harry licked it slowly and extravagantly, and then it moved, wet and glistening, to a nipple, gliding slickly over it, raising it firmly. "When you were talking about those Greek teachers… you mentioned Celts did it too… you were there… can figure out that much… you've done your students before, Bob… don't tell me you haven't…" He pinched the nipple before wetting his finger again, deliberately spiting Bob with the display of his tongue along the tip. "You'd do me if you could, admit it…" He moved his hand to his other nipple.

Mesmerized by Harry's performance, almost unable to move, there seemed little to do but accept defeat. "God help me, yes." Had he been able to make firm contact with the wall, he would have slumped against it; instead, he continued to watch, helplessly transfixed upon the sight and sound of Harry bringing himself to completion, Bob's name on his lips.

* * *

Bob stared at the chalkboard, ostensibly contemplating Agrippa's lecture on astrology, a topic Harry absolutely had to learn something of at some point, no matter how weak his mathematical ability might be. His thoughts should have been more of Agrippa, and less of the black dog… the demonic dog of morbidity, not the demonic familiar of Agrippa's home. There was no good way to handle the problem, no good way to avoid it. If one were to lose either way, best to brazen it out rather than go on in embarrassed silence, pretending that nothing had happened – that way lay madness, and who knew what else.

Harry was late; that was no surprise, all things considered – he hardly would have been surprised had Harry not emerged from his room at all. More surprising, though perhaps it should not have been, was the smugness on Harry's face. Yet of course he was smug – he'd succeeded in breaking Hrothbert of Bainbridge, had he not? No one had done that but the High Council, and even that physical breaking had not broken his spirit. Harry had, in moments that prior night, broken that completely with his confession. It made Bob more a slave to him, in more ways than one, than the deceased necromancer had ever been to any other human. 

Bob might be bound to his skull by chains, and bound to serve his skull's owner by order of the High Council, but he was bound to Harry by an admission of a shared desire that was no longer considered even remotely acceptable to anyone except, perhaps, Justin Morningway, for whom the unacceptable was always to be preferred to anything else.

His charge seated himself at the table, shoving a notebook down beside a dog-eared cheap copy of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy that was both in English and suitable, unlike his uncle's leather-bound copy, for marking while studying. A pencil came out of the notebook, chewed at the end as if a werewolf had been marking territory. Harry flipped the Agrippa open and sat there, quiet and triumphant as if he had mastered the chapter, yet having mastered quite another thing entirely.

Ah, well, carpe diem. "Harry. About last night."

The teen looked up at his instructor. "Oh?" He seemed to have the grace not to be cocky when addressed on the matter – at least so far.

"It is not going to happen again. Are we clear on that point?"

Harry looked less self-satisfied now, though not unsatisfied by any means. "You enjoyed it. You wanted it. You never stopped watching, not once." That was undeniable. "You told me."

Bob turned to face the window. "Harry, there are any number of reasons why it cannot and will not happen again. Not the least of which, to me, is that, if you have failed to notice so far, I tend toward the noncorporeal. I may watch, my dear boy, but that is also the sum total of what I am able to do. I assure you that it is in the long run highly unsatisfying." He paused, looking across the grounds of the estate. 

A chirping robin settled down on a branch, demanding attention. Bob watched for a moment, and then turned back to face Harry, who looked up at him without blinking, eyes fixed on Bob's face. "And it is unsatisfying, in great part, my dear, because the impossibility of what I do want wrenches at me. Do you have any idea, any idea at all – " he vented to his student, "what I would give to be the man who would teach you about love? If having the starving ravens of the High Council eat my soul peck by peck would give me the body to do it, I shouldn't hesitate a minute." 

The pencil being tortured in Harry's hands dropped. He stood up, leaning with his hands on the desk, no longer self-assured at all. "Uh... Bob…?" His voice trailed off to nothingness.

His mentor looked at him sharply, startled by his pupil's sudden and utter change of tone. Bob's voice and gaze softened as he looked at the boy, recognizing that he was having difficulty finding words. "Harry?"

"I… uh… you…" The teenager faltered, appearing for a moment much younger and even less self-possessed than he did thus far. "We… uh… haven't…uh… but…" He trailed off again, conspicuously groping for the phrases he needed. Suddenly, he found them, "I know it's not exactly the way you mean it… but you've taught me that already."

Bob ached for the human ability to place even a hand or an arm on Harry, let alone to offer the embrace he desired. Lacking other means of displaying his sentiment, he drew himself to Harry's side and knelt down on one knee as Harry eased back into his seat. Any plans he had made to protect himself from his student's desires had completely vanished with Harry's reply. "Dearest boy," he sighed heavily. "What am I to say to that?"

Harry drew in a breath and gave a small half-smile. "Oscar Wilde's boyfriend was just in college or something like that, and that's what he called his boyfriend. Did you know that?"

Bob raised an eyebrow at Harry. "As a matter of fact, I did. I was around and about at the time – Wilde had some friends in the Order of the Golden Dawn, and I served one of them at the time. But I should not have thought that you knew that."

"I read about it at the city library when I was looking things up. I didn't want to ask you about things, I wanted to find out myself so I wouldn't be stupid about it." Harry picked up the gnawed pencil again, trying to focus on it rather than on his mentor. "And I did something stupid anyway." He scribbled aimlessly on a sheet of notebook paper, staring down at the lines. "I'm sorry."

Bob turned his own face toward the carpet, tracing its pattern with his eyes to avoid looking at the hurt on Harry's face. "I accept your apology, of course. But we must talk." He took a deep breath to steady himself, for even a ghost, on his own plane, must deal with reaction and emotion, and he does so in death as he did in life. He set his features grimly and glanced back at Harry. "Are you telling me that… this… is what you want? Quite seriously, dear boy? I don't mean another man, I understand that part well enough… but… me? A May-December romance with a ghost thirty-some years and several centuries older than you?"

Harry laid the pencil on the doodling. "But when I'm thirty, you'll still be fifty-something. When I'm sixty, you'll be younger than I am. Not counting the ghost thing with the extra centuries. By the time I'm eighty or so, you'll be the one on the other end of the stick."

Bob chuckled. "Your logic is completely flawed, love, but for once I won't argue the point." He turned solemn once more. "Again, are you sure? What you ask – and what I wish for – certainly defies any modern standard of acceptable behavior, not that I have ever cared to conform my actions to fit anyone's conventions."

"It's what I want, Bob. Stars and stones, guys my age used to have been married for four or five years; I ought to be able to have some kind of clue what I want. I want you."

His mentor, still kneeling at the chair's side, bowed his neck and upper back as low as he could toward Harry. "I obey your uncle's orders, as I must. You, however, are the one who has mastered me. Your loyal servant always, my dearest boy."

Harry leaned down to Bob, overwhelmed and not a little confused. "I… uh… Bob."

Bob lifted his head to meet Harry's gaze. "Bring my skull to your bedside when you retire at night, dear heart. You'll have no need then to summon me to serve you."

"But… how? I mean, you said yourself, you can't…"

A laugh. "I do have a few tricks, my love. Not many, but a few. Permit me to elucidate them to you at night, when the moon is high. The goddess Selene, not the sun, favors the magic of passion. In that subject, I intend to instruct you quite thoroughly." Bob rose, drawing himself back to a more headmasterly stance. "For now, the light of Apollo favors the works of Agrippa. Let us proceed to review this astrological discussion."

Mrs. Veronique drew back from the doorway with her pitcher. An interruption from her in a few minutes would be far more welcome than it would now. "Silly old ghost man," she muttered under her breath. "'Bout time some folks was happy 'round this damn place. Might as well be them, cause nothin' makes Mr. Justin happy. Not anything good, anyway." She reached up to finger a carved wooden rosary of her mother's, murmuring an old Creole prayer. If she happened to be contemplating Papa Ghede rather than some other higher power, who could tell?

* * *  
Part Four:

Harry placed the skull on an open handkerchief on the bedside table, turning it to suit a whim so that its eye sockets faced the bed, and then locked the door. Shedding his clothing – and leaving it in a heap on a chair, as usual, which always made every adult in the household scold him, but what did it matter if his clothing was rumpled as long as he was dressed the next day? – he pulled a loose t-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms on, and then sat on his bed, contemplating. Considering what he'd already done, when he'd previously acted out, he was surprised that he was nervous now.

But he wasn't about to back out of this. He might be a fool, but he wasn't a coward. Not for this, particularly. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying not to imagine what might be going to follow, but desperate to know. "Bob?"

"I'm here." Bob materialized in front of Harry, his expression softer than Harry had ever seen it, eyes hooded but surprisingly gentle. "And I think it's time for the very first lesson, dear boy. Lovers sleep naked. Get rid of that unsightly fabric and let me see you."

Feeling extremely self-conscious, Harry peeled off first the t-shirt and then the bottoms, staring at them in his hands and then tossing them on the floor, choosing not to see if Bob would shudder at the move. He found himself suddenly quite certain that at the mystic age of twenty-one, some amazing sophistication, some kind of instant coolness or ability to make slick moves, must descend upon people. Because he knew, better than he knew anything else, that he had to be totally un-cool and that it showed like the neon around the marquees that used to show his father's name in lights – "Tonight! Harry Dresden, Nerdy Uncool Loser, Live on Stage".

But Bob hadn't run away in horror yet, so that was a good thing, right? Bob was still looking at him, but not the way he had the last time he had seen Harry naked in front of him. There was something in his look that could ignite fire on a block of ice, something that made Harry feel completely weak. Whatever it was, it was making Harry get hard, and when Bob's gaze shifted there, the look he gave Harry was even more intense than it had been. 

Bob's eyes closed for a moment, breaking the spell but softening his face again, as his lips fell apart heavily. "My God, Harry. You are absolutely beautiful." The words were hoarse, barely whispered, but still audible, and fell directly from Harry's ears to a furnace somewhere below Harry's stomach that was fueling the heat coming from his groin. "And I must be overdressed for this, I believe." Bob gestured, a slight but definite movement of the hand that simply made Bob's clothing vanish. Now that was the really slick way to disrobe, Harry thought for one second before his eyes raked over Bob's body. He'd have to ask Bob to – 

And hell's bells, Bob was a mass of flat planes, and whipcord muscle, his arms, chest, and stomach chiseled in that same way that he'd seen in the pictures of Greek gods in his books, or the statues in the museum, silken skin taut over brutally evident firm flesh, the same way it stretched taut over Bob's cheekbones when he spoke. Below that, more hardness, jutting out from the rest of his body and commanding Harry's fixed stare. Bob's cock was heavy and uncut, blood darkening it considerably and placing it in stark relief to pale skin and hair behind it.

The college student who mowed the lawn had nothing on Bob. Definitely nothing. 

The silence was broken by Bob's voice, once again hoarse, with an edge to it that Harry had never heard in anyone's voice before. "Are you pleased with what you see? If not, I am quite capable of casting a glamour on myself to suit you…"

"Oh! No… no… please. You're… I don't even know what to say, Bob; you're amazing. I tried to imagine what you'd look like and I wasn't even close."

Was Bob, of all beings, blushing? It seemed to be the case, as slight redness colored the paleness of his neck and cheeks. "Thank you, love." He moved closer to the bed. "As I presume that you'd rather not wind up merging with me, you might want to lie down on one side of the bed and I'll join you. I presume you'd rather avoid your 'heebie jeebies' for the night?"

"I – uh. Yeah." Harry pulled his lower body onto the bed and moved over to the side, allowing Bob to arrange himself to appear to be lying down beside him. Even though unable to touch Bob, he found the idea of their being together like this, together and naked in his bed, completely overwhelming. He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting his disbelief that this could even be happening; although he had dreamed of this both sleeping and waking, the actual realization of his desire was almost frightening.

Bob seemed to notice his consternation. "Breathe, Harry," he purred gently. "Just breathe, and listen to me. I'm going to teach you things your uncle would just as soon not have you know. Not because you would never learn of physical passion, as you undoubtedly would, but because the magic I want to teach you now is stronger than any other kind, no matter how many talismans or incantations or kinds of incense one uses in sorcery or necromancy.

"Love is the most powerful magic there is," he continued, "and the power of its physical expression is the greatest form of that magic. When we make love, Harry, we are able to connect with every one of the invisible planes and with all of the beings on them, if we choose. If you experience that, dear boy, you will find no other kind of magic, and no other way of having sex, will ever completely satisfy you. Are you willing to have me teach this to you?"

Harry nodded, fascinated by Bob's words. "Can you?"

"I can, and it would be my greatest pleasure to share it with you." Bob moved closer to Harry, appearing to lie on his side. "Listen to me, and follow my words carefully. I cannot touch you myself, so your hands will have to serve as mine, and my voice as the rest. When I speak, imagine that I am touching you myself, doing the things that I am saying to you, and fix your concentration on that. Let me see you touch yourself, Harry. Touch yourself as you would want me to touch you, where you would have me touch you. Let me learn your body, love. Tell me what pleases you."

Harry reached to his chest with one hand and down to his balls with the other, conscious of Bob's eyes on him, feeling almost timid compared to the night before. He wasn't just being watched now; the two of them were doing this, together. As he began manipulating himself, he could see out of the corner of his eye that Bob was stroking his own erection as he whispered gently to Harry. By the time that Harry became relaxed enough, aroused enough, to let out a moan at his pleasure, the sound triggered a matching reponse from his equally aroused mentor.

This time, when Harry climaxed, Harry's name was on Bob's lips as well as Bob's name on his. He fell asleep to the sight of Bob's head on the next pillow, and Bob's murmured professions of love in his ears, along with something that sounded suspiciously like quoting from some poem or another. If this was magic, as Bob said, it was the most unimaginably perfect magic he knew, nothing whatever like what his uncle had Bob teach him during the day.

He slept dreamlessly for once, whatever magic created by them that night apparently successful in the banishing of nightmares. Awaking, he turned and found Bob no longer on his bed, but fully dressed and peering past the edge of one of the bedroom curtains, watching the morning outside.

"Bob?" He propped himself up against the headboard, surprisingly pleased that Bob was still there – or at least had re-emerged from his skull in time to greet him.

"Good morning, dear boy. You seem to have slept well."

"You watched me sleep?" Harry felt oddly embarrassed by the thought. 

Bob turned to smile warmly at him. "Watching one's lover sleep is one of the small joys of existence. As I have little need of sleep for myself, I have the unlimited pleasure of indulging myself by watching yours."

"Lover." Harry turned the word over in his mouth and in his ears. "I think I like that."

"I should hope so. I find the idea eminently satisfactory, personally." He turned back to his view of the window. " 'They who have never seen the daylight peer into a darkened room, and drawn the curtain, and with dull eyes and wearied from some dear and worshipped body risen, they for certain will never know of what I try to sing, how long the last kiss was, how fond and late his lingering.' That, my dearest boy, is Oscar Wilde's writing. I find it highly appropriate to this morning – and as to speaking of lingering, it would be best if you showered and went to breakfast on time. I believe Mrs. Veronique has started cooking already." Bob gave Harry a fond, warm glance as he shook off sleep and pulled himself together and out of bed.

* * *

Justin Morningway was back from his most recent, blessedly long excursion away from home. He tossed a coat and newspaper on a chair for Mrs. Veronique to place away properly as she came to the door. A large suitcase waited for later attention in a corner.

"Good to see you again, Mr. Justin. Fetch you some lemonade or coffee?"

"In a minute, Mrs. Veronique." He crossed the hallway to his study. "I need to check on some matters first and see to my mail. Could you come in here and assist me for a moment?" She followed obediently as he opened the door to his office, turned on the light, and pushed the door shut behind them.

"Now, Mrs. Veronique, did anything happen while I was gone? Not that it ever does under your watchful care."

"Of course not, Mr. Justin." She wiped her hands on her apron, not nervously, but because she had been washing some glassware when he entered the house. "Never does. This house is good and quiet."

"Very good, I'm pleased to hear it." He took off his glasses and gazed coolly into her eyes, holding her spellbound. As she stood fixed in place by the enchantment, he laid a hand on her head. "Now," he ordered, "let me see the parts you left out, as usual."

She stared glassily, unheedingly, as Morningway read her mental impressions. "So… Hrothbert… and Harry. That's very interesting indeed." He smiled wickedly. "Perhaps it's what they both need to keep them docile. A well-tamed necromancer is worth sacrificing a good dozen younger relations. If he only needs one, alive, I call it a bargain." A grimace. "I didn't think Hrothbert could get it off any more, but if Harry does it for him, that's less I need to worry about either of them."

He removed his hand and watched his housekeeper blink into consciousness. "Thank you, Mrs. Veronique. I'm quite pleased that everything has been so uneventful. And I will take that glass of lemonade in here while I read my mail."

She bustled out of the room, everything rustling in her wake as always. "Back in a flash, Mr. Justin. Mighty glad to see you back home."


End file.
